Nick Hern Books: 842 books

A funny and passionate play from the author of The Pride and The Faith Machine. April 1967. Greece is in political turmoil. Charlotte and Theo have retreated to a small island in search of peace and inspiration. But when they meet a charismatic American couple at the port they are seduced into...

Passionate, highly entertaining and gloriously funny - Robert Tressell's classic pre-First World War account of the working lives of a group of housepainters and decorators is vividly adapted by Howard Brenton. The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists recounts the little daily successes and the...

A story of lust, madness and destruction set in the backstreets of Paris. Based on Emile Zola's classic novel. The beautiful but doomed heroine is trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin, Camille. Every Thursday evening she watches her domineering aunt, Madame Raquin, play dominoes......

An orphan girl, adopted by a wealthy Dublin family, is given a pair of beautiful red shoes. At first it appears her dreams have come true... but appearances can be very deceptive. A contemporary retelling of Hans Christian Andersen’s extraordinary fairytale of dance, desire and destruction, premiered at the Gate Theatre, Dublin, in November 2017.

In 1949, scientist and mathematician Dr Jacob Bronowski installs a hidden, locked room in his house. Fifty years later, his grandson discovers the secrets contained in the room, unearthing echoes from across six million years of human history. David Byrne's play Secret Life of Humans...

Many theatre practitioners think of physical theatre as one thing and text-based theatre as another. In this book, Dymphna Callery, author of Through the Body: A practical guide to physical theatre, shows how exercises and rehearsal techniques associated with physical and devised theatre can be applied...

Simon Callow's candid and moving memoir of his passionate friendship with legendary literary agent Peggy Ramsay. 'This extraordinary memoir brilliantly evokes one of the most formidable and influential figures in recent British cultural history, Peggy Ramsay, muse, patron and scourge of the...

'Do you want to live forever? YES or NO.' Polly and Owen have nailed it. Successful in their careers and wildly in love with each other, they feel ready to take on the world. But when a mysterious new technology, promising a break from the daily grind, creeps into everyone's phones,...

Antler steps out of her front door and throws her phone to the ground. She stamps on it. Then she climbs the tallest tree in the park. She doesn’t want to be found, not by anyone. Over the course of one autumnal evening, seven teenagers’ lives intertwine as they make their way through the...

“Don’t go burying wild animals in my garden… or at least ask for permission first.” In the overcrowded city, nature is getting out of control. The mice are scratching between walls, the pigeons are diseased and the foxes are beginning to rule the streets. The problem...

Three timely one-act plays set in war-torn Syria and Iraq, by ‘one of our best new playwrights’ (The Times), featuring the epic and bloody adventures of an Iraqi translator, a London schoolgirl and a crackshot sniper. The Collector is a tale of creeping darkness, set during the Coalition’s...

Two British women, 175 years apart. One is a bright, Islamist schoolgirl; the other a Victorian colonial pioneer. The former would build a caliphate; the latter an Empire. Both are idealists; intelligent adventurers, with strong religious beliefs. Both are frustrated by societies which offer them...

Two artists from opposite worlds meet in an unlikely place - the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. It's 2017, and an ageing fishing boat is sinking fast, its occupants quickly abandoning ship. However, one young woman is panicking - she's six months pregnant, and can't swim. Sebastian, an English...

Settled... Until suddenly you're not... Forced out of London by spiralling living costs, Cathy finds herself in an unfamiliar town with no friends and no money; pushed to make choices she doesn't want to make... Candid, poignant and intimate, Ali Taylor's play Cathy offers a timely reflection...